EMEA LAN switch market sees decline in port shipments and revenues in 1Q05, says IDC

Port shipments declined 6.9% from 17.5 million in 4Q04 to 16.3 million in 1Q05, while revenues fell 6.0% to $1.1 billion in 1Q05 compared to $1.2 billion in 4Q04.

The main reason for the overall decline in the market was a fall in Fast Ethernet port shipments and revenues - shipments declined 10.4% to 13.1 million and revenues fell 15.8% to $391.4 million. At the same time, however, the average sales price (ASP) of LAN switches increased 1.0% to $69.10 per port in 1Q05, compared to a decline of 1.5% in 3Q04-4Q04. The increase in ASP is the result of the continuing increase in popularity of Gigabit Ethernet LAN switches.

Two vendors, Accton/SMC and Netgear, recorded double-digit growth in both port shipments and revenues in 1Q05, but Cisco was the largest vendor in revenue terms after it recaptured a large part of the revenue market share it lost in the previous period. HP Procurve, Cisco's main rival, lost 2.6% revenue market share. The other major LAN switch vendors were 3Com, Nortel, and D-Link.

"The overall EMEA LAN switch market declined in 1Q05, as Fast Ethernet revenues declined rapidly and growth in revenues in the Gigabit Ethernet segment slowed amid fierce price competition," said Peter Hulleman, senior research analyst with IDC's European Telecommunications and Networking group.

IDC's EMEA LAN Switch Tracker contains detailed information on quarterly shipments and revenues segmented by vendor, six technologies, OSI layers (2/3/4-7), and three form factors for 23 countries in the EMEA region.